I’ve always been a fan of the styling of the 1959 Buick Skylark Electra; It’s a rare example of how diagonally staggered headlights can actually look great. The way the headlight eyebrow is molded into the side of the car, flowing back to the side of the car below the wing, is a high point of late ’50’s design before things got square and boxy as a response. I saw an absolutely gorgeous example at Jalopyrama back in 2016 and fell in love with it in person. So this example on Curbside Classic checks all the boxes: sitting on a comfortable (but not egregious) lift, BFG All-Terrains, with a tough-looking roof rack holding a spare tire and other equipment.
It was announced on Tuesday that the editor of Deadspin, Gawker’s sports-oriented website, was fired for “not sticking to sports” by his equity firm corporate overlords. Deadspin has been a daily stop of mine for years now, partially because of the sports reporting, but more because of the ancillary content: it’s often the stuff that’s on the periphery of sports that I like to read. I’ve always enjoyed the editorial voice found there, and the writers they’ve collected over the years were original and interesting. The Outline puts it well:
No other publication has turned such a consistently critical, interrogative, moral, and necessarily cynical eye toward an industry rotted through with bullshit, while also maintaining the levity and humor sometimes required to think seriously about what many people see as children’s games, and more importantly, provide an enjoyable reading experience.
The editor was fired because they told him to run more ads and mess with the formula that made the site profitable. It should be said that the new owners have no prior experience running a media outlet. One of them made his money building an internet advertising company, which is why Deadspin is now suddenly covered in autoplay videos. Yesterday, pretty much the entire staff up and quit.
The media landscape is getting more and more grim as the days go on. Excellent sites are shutting down, being sued out of existence, or just quietly dying on the vine. Go home and hug your family, and make sure your subscription to the New York Times is paid in full.
Update: Drew Magary quit this morning. Removing the site from my reading list.
Over at Deadspin, now that the football season has begun, so has the annual NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo. Always a highlight of the season, even if I’m only seeing games peripherally.
…he compared Defector to a neighborhood bar, no pun intended. “This is our little business—we just need to have these margins, pay our employees, and that’s it,” he said. “No one who owns a bar is thinking, ‘I can’t wait for NBCUniversal to come offer to buy my bar for a hundred million dollars.’
The Columbia Journalism Review does a great piece on Defector, the sports/commentary website born from the ashes of the old Deadspin blog. What an amazing concept: building a self-sustaining business to provide a healthy lifestyle for its employees, not to make the founder rich. Venture capital is a virus. I subscribed almost two years ago and I’ve never regretted it; the writing is that good.
Interesting: most of the staff of the dearly departed Deadspin have started up their own new site, called Defector, coming in September. They’re doing a subscription plan, and for $69/yr. I’d consider it.
Hooray! Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog is back up for all our COVID quarantine needs. To recap: it involves most of the best writers from Deadspin, who came together to cover the Super Bowl for a week, and then dissolved the site. Not necessarily sports content, not necessarily serious, but always good writing.
Hooray! a bunch of the writers from Deadspin have come together and stood up an Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog for the next couple of days. I hope they are able to keep it going.
Drew Magary is one of my favorite writers. His sports writing gets me excited for football season, and he has a special way with soliciting and answering email from the public. Late last year he went silent for a couple of months; it turned out he’d had a brain hemorrhage and was in the hospital for a month. He finally wrote about the experience; I can directly relate to about 85% percent of his story.
I otherwise slept well, except for numerous instances when staff would have to come in to check my vitals or give me appointed meds. They usually did this by switching on all the sour fluorescent lights, which caused me to groan out loud. Then they would say GOOD MORNING MISTER MAGARY! like they were there to deliver me news of Christ’s birth.
He’s a professional, so he writes much better than I do. There were many things I wish I’d been able to say that he said so much better.
I cheated death, and now the Reaper has a chit for my head that he can cash in any time he likes. I now know firsthand that he doesn’t always telegraph his arrival. I was blindsided. When I was young, I thought nothing could kill me. I know I’m old now because I believe that everything can kill me, including just going to a work shindig. I have the receipts to prove it.
Buried amidst his weekly NFL wrapup (and poop story compendium), this gem from Drew Magary:
Regardless, the rest of the country needs to hurry the fuck up and be like Colorado. I could easily survive the Trump Years with cheap and available weed all around me. JUST THE MELLOW I NEED.
…Harbaugh is just like Ravens fans: spoiled brats who harbor the worst inferiority complex on the East Coast; a bunch of purple camo-clad buttholes who keep grudges for so long they have to bequeath them to their surviving loved ones. Their paranoia is a self-fulfilling prophecy because they bitch ENDLESSLY about everything, which in turn compels the rest of the world (officials included) to want them cold and dead in the ground. If I were officiating a Ravens game, I would trip Joe Flacco myself.
Hooray! One of my favorite late-summer happenings is here: Deadspin’s Why Your Team Sucks roundup of the NFL.
“I’d jump his bewns.” Jen and I still quote this to each other.
“That thing is the Citizen Kane of wasted teenage metalness,” says Rick Ballard, who makes a brief appearance as part of a gang yelling curses at the moviemakers.
Heavy Metal Parking Lot is like a live-action recreation of my high school yearbook: the faces, hairstyles, and attitudes are almost identical, even though the accents are pure Dundalk. Previously, previously.